Quad City Symphony Concert - Grieg, Barber, Beethoven

February 7, 2016, 4:52 PM · Right in our main concert hall at Augustana, I went to go hear the Quad City Symphony play this afternoon at 2 p.m. It was quite an event; the first thing I really noticed as I purchased my ticket and walked into the hall, the place I've played in two concerts already with the Augustana Symphony, was the sense of community there, with some families attending and lots of people from the Quad City community there. Looking through the little program notes booklet reminded me of seeing events at the CSO and the Chicago community feel. I got more excited as I looked at the pieces for today - the booklet was winter 2015-2016, so there were some pages about Christmas and a whole concert with wintery music in there as well - and eagerly awaited the opening of the concert. I had no idea what they were playing beforehand, so while walking there I was wondering what they would play, having no guesses myself.

Actually, before the concert began, we all stood up for the National Anthem. Apparently, they had played it with just a string trio before, and now they played it with just the strings!

The first piece on the program was just for strings - it was Grieg's Holberg Suite (1884), the very same piece I played in 2013! (Technically, it was for the March 2014 concert.) In any case, it's a very amazing strings piece that was so fun to hear again and brought back memories of rehearsing it back then. The Air was just incredibly beautiful, and having never heard this orchestra before today, it was easy to tell the strings knew this work very well. I remember for the last movement, the soloists stood for our performance, but here it was just played as normal, and at quite a brisk tempo. This was a great first piece to bring me back to a couple years ago.

The concert continued with another amazing piece, the Barber Violin Concerto (1939), performed by Livia Sohn. This piece is the epitome of story-telling; so many moments just hit your very soul. The major sevenths in the violin part of the first movement are always very beautiful, and Barber combines this beautiful melodic line with little skittery moments for the violinist to show off skills to climb up the fingerboard quickly. Also, of course, the violin helps build into these giant orchestral climaxes that are just utterly fantastic, with huge timpani rolls and everything. And this is just the first movement; the second movement continues with more beautiful melodic lines, and at the beginning, after the orchestral interlude, while they hold a B, the violin comes in with its C# and clambers over with a juicy melody that ends thinking of E major, but goes to E minor instead. I love the littler quirks Barber does; he keeps everything totally tonal, but is able to surprise you. And then the third movement; the perpetuum mobile in the violin. The program notes said it was a dangerous choice on Barber's part to put the violinist through something this tough at the third movement, but then again Ravel did it in his Second Violin Sonata, although, of course, that was a much lighter work compared to this... In any case, this last movement is a triumphant finale where the piano I think really shines as well (there's just piano, no harp in the orchestra, and it's this movement where the piano takes on the role of the harp glissandi instead, which is kind of cool.). Themes from the first movement are brought back, and those final orchestral As up to the final violin notes create just a fantastic ending to it all. After hearing the piece in full, it gave me an idea to at some point possibly write another (more traditional) violin concerto of my own with this as a model or at least an inspiration. Maybe... Oh, and fun fact, today, February 7, 2016, is exactly 75 years after this very piece was premiered by violinist Albert Spaulding with the Philadelphia Orchestra, on February 7, 1941. Pretty cool!

There was a short intermission, at which I read a little document from a book one of my teachers leant me about Paganini playing the violin at a house party, and then the orchestra came back in with something completely different: Beethoven 7 (1813)! Obviously the second movement is pretty well-known (I just noticed the program listed the movements as IV to VII for some reason...) After having really studied Beethoven 5, it was interesting hearing his style again, and listening to some of the effects he used that would have been revolutionary at the time - maybe not revolutionary, but certainly completely different to Mozart. Overall, it was an enjoyable piece to end the concert with, and the conductor and the program pointed out the different rhythms that were used in the piece. (I thought it was funny how when he mentioned the melody of the second movement, he remarked if you brought that to your composition teacher, he'd probably kick you out of the studio! Just kidding. Beethoven's a genius for coming up with such a simple and powerful theme there. It's often the simple stuff we remember best, anyway.)

So yeah! It was a very enjoyable afternoon, and inspired me to spend half an hour on Ravel's 1897 violin sonata - having not played that since the summer, I found coming back to it was very easy for both me and my instrument, so I'm thinking sometime next year maybe I'll perform it for a recital once I've worked on it more with my violin teacher. (I'm starting lessons next year, rather than next term, since it's so busy for me.) I'd like to do more with his second sonata, but I probably wouldn't feel comfortable performing that soon. I'm also excited to finish notating my oboe and violin duo I've been working constantly on for the past few weeks - it's basically a complete piece finally, I've bridged all my sketches together, but I still have to add dynamics and edit some things in it, but that will be performed this spring, though I won't be playing the violin part it this time. It's been a great musical weekend, actually - I've also been spending time on my own looking up music by other composers, just to listen and write down my thoughts in a Listening Journal, since I have access to a whole library of scores at the Augustana Library. Maybe I can check something out to play on my violin...

Well, that's about all for now! Thanks for reading!

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Quad City Symphony Concert - Grieg, Barber, Beethoven

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